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Disney has lost yet another one of its long-held records and once again, it's at the box office.
The Mouse House had a dismal year of box office returns in 2023 and lost the top spot as the highest-grossing studio. Instead, that honor went to Universal Studios which had huge hits with films such as The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Oppenheimer and M3GAN.
Universal raked in $4.907 billion at the global box office, while Disney earned $4.827 billion worldwide. It is the first time since 2015 that Disney has not held the top spot in the global studio rankings.
Disney argued it made $80 million less than Universal in 2023 because it released 23 fewer films than its rival in a note to media, per Variety.
While that may have been a factor, Disney has had a disappointing year including many misfires on properties that may have once been huge hits such as its Marvel releases and animated films such as Wish.
Disney also stressed that while it did not beat Universal, it still managed to have the most titles of any studio in the top 10 this year, with four of the highest-grossing global releases and three of the top domestic releases.
Despite those impressive numbers, Disney also did not have a billion-dollar grossing film since 2014, except for 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic, and it also did not have any movies in the top three. Those movies were Warner Bros.' Barbie and Universal's The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Oppenheimer.
Marvel, which is owned by Disney, had one of its worst years on record and except for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, recorded its worst opening weekends on record with The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger admitted in November during the company's end of year earnings call that the entertainment behemoth had fallen short on delivering quality material in its endeavor to pump out content for its audiences, including its Disney+ streaming service.
"I've always felt that quantity can be actually a negative when it comes to quality," he said. "That's exactly what happened. We lost some focus."
Iger then revealed Disney would reduce production to make fewer movies and focus on higher quality, by spending $25 billion on programming in the new fiscal year, $2 billion less than the previous one.
A number of media experts spoke to Newsweek to share their thoughts on Disney's diminishing box office returns. They pointed to superhero fatigue, blowback from MAGA conservatives to the company's political stances and alleged behind the scenes dramas as just some of the reasons.
"Disney thought that the numerous franchises were financial evergreens. For decades, studios have stubbornly refused to comprehend that audiences want and demand variety," Alexander Ross, a visiting researcher and fellow of Branford College at Yale, told Newsweek. "They do not want to watch the same themes over and over again, without at least a modicum of major creative changes being acknowledged."
Ross added: "Disney must decide whether they are in the entertainment or social engineering business. Their efforts on the latter front likely have alienated millions who identify as centrist, moderates, conservative and Christian in entertainment values."
David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, explained how the company's focus on Disney+—and churning out content to keep subscribers on board—has placed it in an unprecedented position.
"At the beginning of the pandemic, the industry embraced short-term thinking and threw itself into the streaming business without thinking about what that might do to moviegoing when the pandemic ended," Gross told Newsweek.
"The stock market rewarded it. Traditional release windows were blurred and moviegoers were trained to watch what had been theatrical stories at home. Audiences became comfortable, and the value of the big screen dropped. We had at least two years of that, before the industry realized what was happening. By the time Wall Street pulled the plug, the theatrical experience was damaged."
About the writer
Shannon Power is a Greek-Australian reporter, but now calls London home. They have worked as across three continents in print, ... Read more